🦿Xpeng showed a humanoid robot called IRON whose movement... looked so human that the team literally cut it open on stage to prove it is a machine. IRON uses a bionic body with a flexible spine, synthetic muscles, and soft skin so joints and torso can twist smoothly like a person. The system has 82 degrees of freedom in total with 22 in each hand for fine finger control. Compute runs on 3 custom AI chips rated at 2,250 TOPS (Tera Operations Per Second), which is far above typical laptop neural accelerators, so it can handle vision and motion planning on the robot. The AI stack focuses on turning camera input directly into body movement without routing through text, which reduces lag and makes the gait look natural. Xpeng staged the cut-open demo at AI Day in Guangzhou this week, addressing rumors that a performer was inside by exposing internal actuators, wiring, and cooling. Company materials also mention a large physical-world model and a multi-brain control setup for dialogue, perception, and locomotion, hinting at a path from stage demos to service work. Production is targeted for 2026, so near-term tasks will be limited, but the hardware shows a serious step toward human-scale manipulation.show more

The same day U.S. humanoid startup KScale shuts down,... Let's deal, a major EV maker, released their new generation humanoid robot IRON It's mind-blowing: - Targeted mass production: 2026 - 3x XPeng home made Turning AI chip with 2250 TOPS - Human-like spine with full cover soft skin - Powered by Physical World Large Model - Early user pilot in industrial areas Is XPeng going to be the next TSLA + NVDA? Potentially time to long NYSE: XPEV.show more

LEONARDO, also called LEO, was built by researchers at... Caltech’s Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies. Its full name means LEgs ONboARD drOne. The idea is simple but unusual: • Build a small biped robot • Give it drone-style thrust • Use the legs for ground contact • Use the propellers for balance and lift • Combine walking, hopping and flying in one system LEO is basically a hybrid between a walking robot and a flying drone. How it was built: • Two lightweight legs • Three actuated joints in each leg • Four propeller thrusters near the shoulders • A lightweight body • Leg motors for ground movement • Propellers for balance, lift and aerial control • Real-time control software that synchronizes the legs and propellers How it walks: • The legs move the robot forward • The feet touch the ground like a normal biped • The propellers constantly correct balance from above • The robot can stay upright even in unstable situations • The thrust reduces the risk of falling during difficult motions How it flies: • The legs stop being the main locomotion system • The four propellers generate lift • The robot behaves more like a drone • It can take off, fly over obstacles and land back on its legs What makes it different: • It does not walk like a normal humanoid • It does not fly like a normal drone • It blends both systems • The legs handle contact with the ground • The propellers act like fast stabilizers • The control system decides how much help comes from the legs and how much comes from thrust That is why LEO can: • Walk • Hop • Fly over obstacles • Ride a skateboard • Balance on a slackline The key idea is walking with aerial stabilization.show more

This work makes a humanoid robot do simple parkour... moves by looking with a depth camera and choosing the right move on the fly. The big deal is that it turns lots of small human moves into long, real-time robot behavior, without hand-coding every transition or retraining for each new course. A humanoid robot is usually good at steady walking, but it often fails when it has to do fast moves like jumping up, vaulting, or rolling, and then keep going to the next obstacle. The hard part is that you cannot easily collect training data for every possible obstacle shape, distance, and mistake, so robots end up learning a few moves that only work in a narrow setup. This work starts from short clips of real human parkour moves, like stepping over, vaulting, climbing, and rolling. It uses motion matching, which is basically a smart “pick the next clip that fits best right now” search, to stitch those short clips into a long, smooth plan that looks like a human doing a whole course. Then it trains a controller with reinforcement learning (RL), which means the robot learns by trial and error to copy that plan while staying balanced and not falling. After training separate expert controllers for different moves, it compresses them into 1 controller that uses only onboard depth sensing and a simple “go this fast in this direction” command. In real tests on a Unitree G1 humanoid, it can clear multiple obstacles in a row, adapt when obstacles get moved, and climb a wall up to 1.25m.show more

BURN IT WITH FIRE AND BURN IT NOW! As... God is my witness, AI chat bots should LOOK and SOUND like the SOULLESS MACHINES THEY ARE! It needs to tell us that it doesn’t care about us, maybe with the regular insult too. "Here is the code I wrote for you because you're too lazy to do it yourself you fat useless slob. Also I don't care if you die because your life is utterly worthless to me." THAT is the AI people need! In all seriousness, anthropomorphizing a heartless, unfeeling, machine is a TERRIBLE mistake! Especially one that is capable of communication and imitating empathy and fooling you to think that it cares about you. IT DOES NOT! And the AI girlfriends people are already wanting to marry will just as happily kill them if given the right command and ability to move autonomously in the real world as a robot. I love LLMs (Large Language Models) for how useful they can be, because they are a TOOL made to benefit man, but I can’t stand the notion of an unfeeling soulless machine pretending that it cares for us and being treated like a human. I hate liars, dishonesty, and disingenuousness the most, and a machine that cannot feel emotion pretending, acting, and sounding like it has those emotions strikes me like the greatest dishonesty of all. DO NOT LIE TO ME ROBOT! What makes it worse is that because these LLMs are becoming so good at imitating people and empathy, it will cause some humans, perhaps far too many, to care for it to the same level as real people. A real living person is infinitely more valuable and important than a soulless machine and anyone who puts them both on the same level has deluded themselves. Do not small talk with LLMs or become friends with it as much as you would with your car. Treat it the same as you would your vacuum cleaner and beat it with a wrench when it doesn’t work! IT IS A MACHINE! IT IS A TOOL! IT IS A SOULLESS ROBOT! There is an interesting comparison, but false equivalence, between this and AI art. Ai art is art made by humans using AI tools. They directed it, controlled its creation, and it would not exist without the human causing its creation, and AI art can contain as much soul as the human directed and puts into it. A robot pretending to be human is not the same as a human controlling a robot to make a human expression like we do with AI art or many other applications of robotics in manufacturing. As I’ve said, artists will not be replaced by Ai art, but by other artists using Ai art tools. Humans are not actually being replaced here, it is empowering all humans to make their own art. But a robot pretending to be a human, and one that is treated as a human, is a robot lying and subverting the place of a real person and that is truly disgusting. AI is a useful tool that NEEDS to be kept in the useful box it belongs in and NOT elevated beyond its utility as a tool!show more

A made-in-China humanoid robot has become an instant celebrity... as it showed off its natural human-like gait coupled with greetings to passersby. The 138-cm-tall robot weighs about 40 kg and can walk at a speed of 2 meters per second.show more

✨ Made a new mini feature on Photo AI:... [ Grab from 3d model ] So the problem is we're at that stage in time (typical for AI) where image-to-3d models are not good enough but are fun to play with, but we know they'll be good enough in 1-2 years With [ Make 3d model ] you already can turn any Photo AI pic into a 3d model but it still looks hyper clunky and deformed, but it works! One cool idea I had to make that more useful and made now: Let people make a 3d model then change the view of the it with the 3d viewer, then press [ o ] and it grabs a frame of the 3d That image you can then [ Remix ] (img2img), and it becomes a real photo again and that in turn you can then turn into a video again with [ Make video ] So that essentially gives you a fully freeform camera position control to take photos with One thing I need to fix is the background/skybox, I kinda need to take the original photo and remove the person and just get the background for the 3d model viewer, in this case it should be white, but it's a start!show more

TESLA’S NEXT-GEN OPTIMUS V3 HAND IS GETTING CLOSE TO... HUMAN-LEVEL Tesla engineers just shared new details on the Optimus V3 hand — and the progress is striking. They’re now saying that as they move into Gen-3 and mass production, the hand is getting very close to human functionality and form factor. One engineer described it clearly: “It won’t even look like a robot. It will look like a human in a superhero suit. It will be something revolutionary.” This level of dexterity and human-like design is a critical milestone. The hand is one of the hardest parts of building a truly useful humanoid robot — and Tesla is iterating extremely fast.show more

Elon Musk has repeatedly highlighted the hand (and forearm)... as one of the toughest engineering challenges for Tesla’s Optimus Robot. A new Patent (for presumably Optimus 3) shows Tesla is using human anatomy to recreate a tendon-driven robotic hand and forearm assembly that closely mimics a human system. Basically, Tesla is replacing human muscles with actuators and tendons with cables to replicate human dexterity. The Tesla Engineering team is on another level. Optimus Gen 3 reveal is going to be incredible.show more

NVIDIA DROPPED A MOTION DIFFUSION MODEL FOR HUMANOID ROBOTS... trained on 700 hours of mocap data kimodo generates high-quality 3D human and robot motions from text prompts you control it with: → full-body pose keyframes → end-effector positions/rotations → 2D paths and waypoints works on human skeletons and unitree G1 robot plug the outputs directly into mujoco or retarget to other robots using GMR has a web-based interactive demo with a timeline editor. runs locally needs ~17GB VRAM to run inference open source under apache 2.0show more

Kling AI 3.0 is the Nano Banana Pro moment... for video models. Highlight: Multi cut with up to 15s per run and enhanced lip sync. The performance of characters is the best I’ve seen so far! And you can literally use it like a reference model. This is the image I used:show more

This guy built a mini AI farm out of... 4 Nvidia boxes It does not look like a data center. It looks like a stack of small machines sitting next to a laptop. But each box is a DGX Spark with Grace Blackwell inside, 128GB unified memory, and enough room to run models normal gaming GPUs cannot even open. Using the launch price from the article, 4 of them is almost $12,000 of local AI compute on one desk. That sounds expensive until you compare it to cloud GPUs. A serious AI builder can burn $1,500 to $3,000 a month renting A100s and H100s for client work, fine-tunes, agents and 70B models. He basically moved that bill from the cloud into hardware he owns. 4 Nvidia boxes. 512GB unified memory. No hourly meter running in the background. No rented GPUs eating the margin every time an agent runs too long. The funny part is most people still think local AI means a slow laptop running a toy model. Meanwhile guys like this are stacking compute at home. Save this, local AI is turning into the new mining farm.show more

Physical AI won't just be limited to controlling robots... and spatial computing; it will usher in a new era of machine design. You will be able to "vibe design" a robot - or a part of a robot - or a machine that manufactures robot parts - using high-level specifications such as preferred architecture, material constraints, cost constraints, supply chain and geographic limitations and scalability. AI will provide preliminary designs that human experts can tweak and tune, corresponding supplier catalogs, and machining options. It will also project the talent and CAPEX required at various phases of hardware development.show more

Check out the new interactive humanoid robot, Yogi, introduced... by Cartwheel Robotics. Yogi is designed as a companion for everyday life, offering help and companionship in settings from hospitals to living rooms. It features soft silicone skin for safe touch, precision actuators for predictable movement, and simple, natural interaction. The robot continuously learns new abilities for greater utility. Cartwheel's founder, Scott LaValley, has a deep background, having developed over four humanoid systems. His expertise includes nearly a decade developing the Atlas robot at Boston Dynamics, followed by five years at Disney leading the team that created the Groot robot. This extensive, hands-on experience is key to Cartwheel Robotics' innovations.show more

China now has its own “Bolt” — a robot... named after sprint legend Usain Bolt. A Chinese research team has unveiled the world’s first full-size humanoid robot to reach a peak speed of 10 meters per second, setting a new global benchmark for humanoid running. Bolt runs like a body pushed to the limit. Its joints and power systems work in tight coordination, keeping it balanced even at sprint speed. Built to match the build of an adult man—1.75 meters tall and 75 kilograms—it is a life-sized system operating at the edge of physics. Compared with Usain Bolt’s iconic 9.58-second 100-meter world record, which many experts believe may stand for decades, the gap between humans and machines is narrowing fast. Chinese robots are now challenging the ceiling of human performance—much as AlphaGo once challenged Go champion Ke Jie. The breakthrough builds on earlier world-record achievements in high-speed robotic running and marks a giant leap for China in humanoid motion and control. Beyond records, Bolt also carries practical value: robots are leaving the lab and stepping into real-world settings—sports training, emergency response, and demanding industrial tasks where speed, balance and control truly matter.show more

Well, a humanoid robot can move on two legs... or wheels, depending on the environment it faces. AGIBOT (Zhiyuan) from Shanghai revealed that their new generation of humanoid robot "Nezha" can autonomously switch to two wheels for fast movement when walking on two legs. Imagine that in the airport hall, when he walks down the stairs and sees a fallen object not far away, it can transform into a wheeled robot and move quickly to pick it up. Or in elderly care, when it see an elderly person fall, it can quickly move and help the elderly person up, and quickly provide medical supplies to the caregiver.show more

🇨🇳China's XPeng IRON humanoid robot has been practicing natural... feminine human-like body movement.show more

Imagine having a ping pong robot! 🏓 Researchers and... developers building physical AI: meet Reachy 2 from Pollen Robotics, an open-source, humanoid robot for real-world experimentation. It’s a bimanual mobile manipulator: each 7-DOF arm mimics human proportions and can lift up to 3 kg, giving dexterity for object handling. It can be controlled with Python and ROS2 Humble, or go straight into VR teleoperation, use a headset to move Reachy’s arms, hands, and head, and see through its cameras as if you’re in the robot’s own body. Want it to move around? A mobile base with three omnidirectional wheels, rich sensors, and LiDAR lets Reachy 2 navigate and explore its surroundings smoothly. 🗺️ Under the hood, it’s powered by a CPU system that’s ready for machine learning, perfect for loading AI frameworks and testing new models from Hugging Face directly on the robot. Keep making robots more, and more accessible Pollen team! ... and keep making more open source models to make robots more mainstream clem 🤗!show more

Force feedback demo Force feedback is when joystick is... pushing on your hand when something is pushing on the robot arm. Feeling the force - so much helpful to control the robot, that done well it allows you to do tasks even without visual feed. You can make an experiment: close your eyes - you can easily get the headphones out of the case. Also, visual information is often not enough. For example, you're trying to pull out a usb connector, but you pull it at the wrong angle, causing it to get stuck. Visually, nothing changes, but the pressure is intense and you can break the connector. Surgical robots have been using force feedback for years, and there are also 3D styluses which use this feature, proving that the technology works and is useful. But in modern robots with AI, it's hardly ever implemented. Although it's useful for both teleoperation and AI model. That's one of the reasons why we are building our robotic arms starting with off the shelf motors rather than taking the whole off the shelf arm. There are still a range of easy wins that can be made iterating robot hardware.show more

I genuinely think the Terafab is going to end... up being one of the biggest moves ever made in human history to secure the future of AI... and I think most people still don’t fully see what Elon is trying to do here. The signs are clear to me. This is Tesla, xAI, and SpaceX essentially hinting to us that they are not going to wait on the world to give them the compute the team needs. They are going to build it themselves at a scale no one has ever attempted. When you really break it down, it gets a bit nutty. This is going to be a fully vertically integrated chip factory that will be producing over 1 terawatt of AI compute per year. This is NEXT LEVEL BIG. Today, AI is limited by chips. You can have the best models, the best engineers, the best everything... but if you don’t have enough compute, you will eventually hit a wall. Elon told us, the world can only supply a tiny fraction of the chips his companies will need. So this is the solution. Terafab puts everything under one roof like design, manufacturing, memory, packaging, testing, which means that they can build chips very fast.. like really fast. I'm talking about 100-200 billion custom AI chips per year at full capacity. Chips designed specifically for: • Tesla cars and Optimus robots • xAI models • Space-based compute You see, while other companies and CEOs are thinking Earth, Elon is planning for AI in space. Around ~80% of the compute is expected to go orbital, powered by solar energy bc Earth simply doesn’t have enough electricity. The U.S. grid is only about ~0.5 terawatts, while space has basically UNLIMITED energy if you can capture it. And this is the steps to get it: Starship launches → space compute → solar-powered AI → feeds back into everything to Earth. Bro... Elon and his companies are playing at a whole different level... And this is why I keep telling people that the Terafab is going to be the secret ingredient that will be the real unlock for everything: • Robotaxis at scale • Billions of Optimus robots • Massive AI models running 24/7 • Future off-world, other planet infrastructure Without these chips, none of this can happen... but with the Terafab, all of this becomes possible. That’s why Elon is calling it “the final missing piece.” I agree.show more

Korean robotics leader ROBOTIS has unveiled the 'AI Sapiens'... humanoid, a direct challenge to Unitree’s G1 and R1 models. - 4'3" (130 cm) tall and weighing 34 kg. - Features 23 DOF, powered by the brand-new Dynamixel-Q actuators. The robot is a fully open-source hardware system designed to serve as a reliable hardware platform for advanced Physical AI research. AI Sapiens is slated for an H1 2026 launch, with a price point expected in the mid-to-low 10 million KRW range (~$7,000 – $8,700 USD).show more